We tested to determine if putting a keyword twice in the title tag can harm your site, or does it even matter
It’s amazing how many SEOs state myths of their blogs as absolute fact. The other day, an SEO blog stated as fact “Search Engines have not used keyword density as a ranking factor in a very, very long time. They do not measure the keyword density in page/document titles.”
Someone in the S.I.A. may have read this article, or another one just like it since information is often passed on from one blog to the next, which keeps the cycle of misinformation from flowing.
This is one of the reasons why we test, to verify information and tips that is going around, and to be able to know which ones really work.
Round One
For round one of this test, pages were set up with 400 word articles and a 2% keyword density. The experiment page had the keyword 2x in the Title tag.
On April 15th, only the control page is indexed (the page with one keyword in the title). Two days after, on the 17th, both the control and test page indexed. The test page with the two keywords outrank the control page.
Round Two
Round two has the same set up as round two, but using a different keyword – pages were set up with 400 word articles and a 2% keyword density. The experiment page had the keyword 2x in the Title tag.
On April 15th, only the control page is indexed. The next day, both control and test page has indexed, the control page being outranked by the test page. This remains – the test page ranking – on the next day.
Conclusion
Having a keyword in the title tag 2x is not over-optimization, per se. Does this mean that you should run out and put your target keyword in the title tag 2x on all your pages?
Probably not.
All the test pages had the same keyword density in the body and had 400 words on the page.
What this test actually demonstrates is that for that 400 word article, there was still some optimization improvement that was available. As such, putting in the keyword 1 more time in the title tag didn’t automatically over optimize the page because there was still optimization that could be done.
Wondering what the glass ceiling is and what constitutes over optimization? We have some more tests on this! Check out our test articles for more details.